Monthly Archives: January 2014

Dual citizenship in the EU.Most of the discussions about access to Scottish citizenship after independence have been about expat Scots and their descendants (as well as the related discussion about rUK citizenship for Scots).

However, I believe there is a bigger problem closer to home, concerning those who can take part in Scottish Parliament elections (and because of that also in the independence referendum), but who will lose that vote after a Yes victory, namely EU (and possibly Commonwealth) citizens resident in Scotland.

The SNP’s 2002 proposal for a Scottish constitution (PDF) suggested granting Scottish citizenship to everybody living in Scotland on independence day (“Every person whose principal place of residence is in Scotland at the date at which this Constitution comes into force shall be a citizen of Scotland”), but the white paper states that only UK citizens will be Scottish citizens from day one, and that migrants are restricted to applying for naturalisation after independence, and only if they’ve lived here for at least ten years and are of good character (see the table at the end of this chapter).

This means that there’ll be a significant group of independence referendum voters who will effectively disenfranchise themselves by voting Yes in September. Some of them will just apply for Scottish citizenship afterwards, but a large group won’t qualify or will have their own reasons not to do so.

For instance, Denmark and several other EU countries don’t allow dual citizenship to be acquired. It’s allowed if you’re born with two nationalities, or if you can get another one without applying for it (this typically happened in the past in some countries where wives automatically got their husband’s nationality on marriage), but if you apply to become a citizen of another country, you lose your Danish citizenship. In other words, it wouldn’t cause any problems if Scotland granted Scottish citizenship to all Danish citizens living in Scotland on 24 March 2016, but if they have to apply for naturalisation, they will lose their Danish nationality in the process.

At the moment, EU citizens living in Scotland can vote in all elections, apart from the Westminster ones. However, after independence Scottish Parliament elections will not be local elections any more, and EU citizens cannot vote in general elections in any other country, so I’d be surprised if Scotland was an exception. (The UK currently lets Irish and Commonwealth citizens take part in Westminster elections, but most other countries restrict voting in general elections to their own citizens.) If there are plans to let all EU citizens resident in Scotland vote in general elections after independence, please do let me know!

The result of this is that EU citizens living in Scotland are likely to lose their right to vote in Scottish Parliament elections when Scotland becomes independent. This is hardly a great incentive to vote Yes.

I strongly believe we can maximise the foreign-born Yes vote by granting Scottish citizenship to everybody who can take part in the independence referendum, not just to British citizens living in Scotland.

québec libre, a photo by faustineclavert on Flickr.Members of the SNP are routinely called nationalists, and the same word is often applied to everybody in the wider pro-independence movement, although Westminster Unionists also like to call us separatists, and international (mainly American) observers occasionally describe us as secessionists.

Of course we’re nationalists, but civic ones, which isn’t really the primary meaning of “nationalist” in most other countries. This sometimes confuses No campaigners, who at times say things like “I can’t vote Yes because I’m an internationalist”, although most Yes people have a very international outlook. (In fact I’m often surprised by the number of people in the SNP and in Yes Scotland who have either got family abroad or have lived outwith Scotland for a long time).

Of course we’re separatists, insomuch as we want to be ruled by a parliament that is separate from Westminster rather than subordinate to it, but we’re very happy to share a lot of laws and institutions with the rUK, with Europe and with the wider world.

Of course we’re secessionists to a certain extent, given that it’s to be expected the rUK will be more similar to the UK than Scotland will, simply because Scotland is so small in comparison, and because most of the shared institutions are located in London. However, we tend to think of Scottish independence as putting an end to the 1707 Act of Union, which was a treaty uniting two sovereign countries, so we believe we’re dissolving a union rather than seceding from it.

Sometimes I just wish people on both sides would agree to call the Yes side sovereigntists, which seems to be the preferred term in Quebec, because that’s exactly what we are. The Yes side is united by the belief that Scotland should be a sovereign nation again.

Addendum (11/04/14): Wee Ginger Dug wrote this today: “By the way, it’s far easier to express some political concepts in Spanish than in English. In Spanish you don’t constantly have to have annoying arguments about all independence supporters being nationalists and just the same as Hitler. Spanish has the useful word independentista – which means a person who supports the right to self determination, and nationalism doesn’t come into it. English just has the word “nationalist”. Unfortunately the English version, independentist, makes you sound like a tooth puller for independence, or someone who does freelance fillings.”